Hawke64

Tried the Entropy demo. The art style is fantastic and the controls are rebindable. The lack of any QoL features, such as manual saving, and the RPGMaker-like combat are disappointing. Given that it's the developer's second title with the same single auto-save system (now with backups, fortunately), I have a suspicion that it is intentional. Also, the thing I adored in GreedFall is that the skip line and the select response functions were different keys, so I could safely tap away on replays. Speaking of, should replay and try to get a better ending for one of the factions.

Greedfall: The Dying World The default face can have a different hairstyle and skin tone and does look the best Not the starting area, but the point about visibility. It might look like a door but it is actually a wall. The "trust me, bro" worked. Jumping over a branch. The last part of the prologue

Interesting. Thank you for the possible explanation. Still, it is unlikely to be "agentic" AI with access to the mailing tool and there must have been a human who LGTM'd the output, though it would be less intentional in that case. I guess, the genAI subscriptions can be cancelled, but I doubt that anyone would get a subscription for a non-programming LLM only instead of some sort of an office suite (MS Copilot and Google Gemini and not Anthropic Cloude).

The annual Pride Month Bundle is up. https://itch.io/b/3684/the-power-of-pride-bundle-2026-10-pwyc-edition The Bundle Explorer is less helpful than I'd like, but at least https://bwobbers.itch.io/detective-beebo-night-at-the-mansion is on my wishlist, so there's something.

GOG is the only DRM-free storefront with more professional titles, so I hope that they will remove whoever thought it was a good idea to send this (a bit too specific to be random) and hire a sensitivity reader or a team (I was annoyed when I got an unclearly marked ad for hetero porn). Admittedly, I stopped reading the email after "Slavic".

I have finished GreedFall: The Dying World. In general, the game has charm and I am happy with the time spent, but there are technical issues and minor bugs. In terms of combat, the tactical approach did not change much - the tank CC's, everyone else hits. The tank companion was able to restore both his armour and health, so could effectively hold the line indefinitely (or until the damage received was higher than the AP generation). The only issue was the range of the Taunt ability when there were many foes. The final boss died surprisingly quickly on the first attempt, being able to perform only a single attack each time between getting stunned. On the continent, there were much fewer giant "guardian" bosses, but the ones present were unique in combat design and appearance. When compared to GF1, where there were very few types but at least one boss per location (as everyone and their grandpa were turning into the tree zombies), the difference is noticeable. I strongly suspect that a deeper understanding of the systems would be required on the higher difficulties, as there are a lot of active and passive abilities, their synergies, and craftable consumables. I was looting a lot, but did not have the need to use resources, so I shouldn't have combed the locations - it was a significant time sink and interesting or unique items were only in chests and only in ~5-10% of them. On an amusing note, some armour descriptions were easter eggs - there was a jacket of Those Who Come After (Expedition 33), an armour of the Sands of Time (Prince of Persia), and some heavy cuirass referencing a Balor and a bridge (the Lord of the Rings, I believe). I like the equipment design quite a lot, though the colour schemes being bound to the equipment tiers was somewhat unpleasant (granted, only the tank really needed the armour). In terms of story, it was quite compelling overall. The PC is unavoidably mostly Neutral Good and can automatically do dumb ****. It is noticeable in the main quest, but there are more options in the side quests. The antagonist appeared in person fairly late, though the impact of the actions was felt throughout the game. I'd say that it is welcome, as talking BBEGs annoy me immensely. Unfortunately, the PC is also unavoidably a druid story-wise, even if they wear heavy armour and wield a rifle. As for the continuity, the quest outcomes tracked correctly (e.g. the Knight appears if survives), even if sometimes unpleasantly (I said a wrong thing to a random guy in the main quest, so he did not cooperate and died suddenly in a side quest, so I messed up a faction quest line). There are smaller inconsistencies, such as a companion firstly being told that the PC's father died, then 15 minutes later in an environmental auto-dialogue asking about what happened to the PC's father (as in whether he was alive). At some point, a companion can do an unwise action and die. I was able to ask the companion kindly not to do it, so the party member was definitely not dead. When we revisited the location where the dialogue took place, the companion's corpse was lying prominently next to the path and the very same character was standing right next to me and being quite alive. A smaller thing is that I had found a turban with a full-face mask early and wore it throughout the playthrough. Every NPC still recognised me as an islander and, in one scene, I drank a potion without removing the headgear. Several times, I got kicked out from stealth for the enemies to start a dialogue, despite them normally being unable to look down and see me crouching 2 metres away. Also, in a side quest, we found a lizard dog, a lewolan, who had been brought to the continent and quite stressed due to being a territorial animal in an unfamiliar environment. So, naturally, the party liberated the scaly doggo and stashed him in the cargohold next to the merchant. At no point there was an opportunity to release him back on the island, so he stayed there with the tail clipping through the wall behind. Overall, the side quests were satisfying and the number and variety were just right - no filler and the world did not feel empty. The companion quests provided an impressive range of activities, from the usual combat to stealth to puzzles, so I was quite happy with them. Also, somewhere from the mid-game, several capes with +2 to the talents became available, so they covered a lot of skill checks. I still needed some investment to get the Hard checks, but there were few enough of them. As for the other bugs, the game crashed a few times during cutscenes, I had only one corrupted save file and once the companions' bodies and hair failed to load, so I was talking to bald flying heads and hands. The more noticeable issues were the performance, the NPCs and textures loading late (so the props, such as brooms and sword were levitating), and the ship. When you travel between the main areas via the ship, you first get teleported to the ship, and only then to the chosen fast travel point. While the area loads (from an SSD), the game, including the sound, stutters and briefly freezes. It would have been better if the loading screen for this was just the ship sailing animation (either its concept art or something more fancy, like it moving on the world map), especially considering that the ship could be fast-travelled to at any time. One time (that I noticed), an optional merchant became unavailable (despite loudly advertising her services) and I missed a unique piece of armour. Regarding the DLC, I think it was released on 4 May, so Spiders themselves must have worked on it. From SteamDB, there have not been any file updates since. I suppose, unless the developers somehow reorganise and regain their IP, there might be no further support.

I saw an announcement for a DLC after 29 April, so someone is still working on the game, though I doubt that the bugs will be fixed before the support ends. While GF2 is not a Larian-style sandbox, there are still quite a lot of opportunities to break things and express your unique playstyle. Granted, I was puzzled when the (main) quest marker pointed at an NPC who was underground, but I was able to figure out where to go (to be fair, the places have very descriptive names on the map) and the game proceeded as expected. In another quest, the party was stealthily gathering evidence against the BBEG. There was an option to run into a group of mercenaries and learn from them (required a successful skill check) where the BBEG's secret base was. At first, I skipped this option, then took it, then reloaded to the first point (where the party did not know where the base was). In the knowing state, the party was able to see the quest marker and the highlighted wall marks on the way to the base. In the not-knowing state, the path was quiet and I was jogging from memory (though, there was only one floor transition marker in that part of the map). So, there were several ways to proceed and it was impressive that the game did not break and did not force a strict sequence of events (it did at some other points*). Another thing is that not all quests have markers (unsure if intentional). I had an escort quest where the NPC told me to go, firstly, to his friend who lived "near the aqueduct south from" a district I had not found yet, then to the faction HQ. I also quickly discovered that I could not save during this particular quest. So, I decided to skip the friend visit and go straight to the HQ because that I could at least see on the map. Fortunately, I found the district and the aqueduct on the way. Unfortunately, the aqueduct was on the west and not south, so I spent some time following it down until an opening appeared and the cutscene triggered. Going to the faction base afterwards was easy. So, I had to actually read the map and look at the landmarks to find out the destination and it was enjoyable. What I genuinely like is the story and the companions. The story is that you are an islander sage (so I was a very sneaky and stabby sage, I suppose) and you and your friends get kidnapped and the teacher killed (ironically, the teacher was the only one not participating in combat and just standing still in the tactical mode/covering his head in the over-the-shoulder camera mode). So, you are trying to find your way home (at least, no opportunity so far to try to conquer the continent). The premise also sets up the companions - they are the people who are willing to help you because what happened was unjust (or they broke out with you and did not have a ship, so decided to tag along). They are also the best (not as the most widespread) representatives of the respective factions. Admittedly, I do not quite understand their classes and the expected combat roles, but they seem to work well with everything - there are 3 skill trees and 1 weapon type per companion, but the attributes and other equipment can be anything, while many have abilities fitting several possible archetypes. I am generally happy with the combat, despite it being fairly straightforward on the default difficulty - the tank does CC and gets hit (also heals), the rest of the party removes the armour from the enemies and cuts into the HP. There is some synergy (e.g. higher damage on enemies without armour or suffering from a debuff), but I have not seen any reason to dig deeper into it as of now. The AI can do some positioning (e.g. the rogue can auto-flank), but allowing it to choose targets or use abilities is not a good idea. *I found it quite funny - a quest, 2 different battles where you have 2 different NPC allies. In the first case, the NPC ally can die and the dialogue changes slightly (well, can't talk to a corpse, but can discuss the outcome with the companions). In the other, the NPC ally continues fighting at 1HP, then (as one could guess) tries to cross the party and regains the whole health bar for the mini-boss battle. Another bug I found amusing is that the PC was trying (successfully) to vault over a very small tree branch (still attached to the tree) in the starting area. The traversal is fairly inconsistent in terms of things you can interact with, but fine in general (challenges in seeing things aside). --- A significant issue at the present is that it is hot af in the city and I am not brave enough to run the game in this weather. Should be better tomorrow.

Is this oil? Is it supposed to be Greek Wrestling?

I'd guess that the larger a studio gets, the fewer risks they can take if they increase the production costs. Not wasting funds on "more graphics" or full VA does not seem to occur to them. The only developers I can name off the top of my head who keep their costs in check are Spiderweb Software and The Game Bakers (kind of - haven't played Cairn).

Greedfall: The Dying World The misadventures on the continent. I have discovered that there are timed quests by failing a side quest. No spoiler tags as it is fairly inconsequential. On the Olima markets, there was a noble berating her servant. The servant lost the noble's necklace. I quickly found it and tried several dialogue options to return it to the servant. The thing was that one of the companions was disapproving, so I decided to swap the party and return later. I got sidetracked and, when I finally got back, the noble and the servant were nowhere to be found and the quest promptly failed. There was nothing in the journal to indicate that it was a timed quest, however, the noble had mentioned going to a ball. So, while it is more immersive than the NPCs waiting for me for a few in-game months, the lack of clear time limits is unpleasant. The stealth system, on the other hand, is funny. There are several notable things. When you stealth-kill a hostile NPC and save/load, sometimes the remaining hostiles spawn at different positions, including the newly freed one. Another one is that you technically can approach from the front (~45 degrees) and, when you stealth-kill the opponent, they turn their back to you. And another one is that even with 1 point in the Stealth skill, the hostiles cannot notice you farther than a few metres away in the ~45-60 view cone in front of them. The companions, conveniently, are completely invisible. There are some continuity bugs, such as a quest NPC spawning after the related quest was completed or companions referring to the non-chosen options. It does not happen too often, but it is noticeable. When the quest resolutions are tracked correctly, it feels good, though. Other than that, I've spent most of the time trying to comb the areas for loot. I do not know whether I will ever need all those crafting ingredients or low level equipment, but if it is there, I must collect it (i.e. the game might be balanced in a way that considers the player looting everything in sight and if I do not, I will be at a disadvantage later). It is a fairly meditative experience. I am also certain that the playtime would have been halved (thirded?) if I did not do it. I think there are difficulty options, but I'd like to stick to the default one. On the other hand, it makes the story progress much slower than it could have been. There is also a new "feature" - you cannot take more than one companion quest simultaneously (the PC auto-refuses) and the companion remains in the active party until it is completed. I probably could just grab 3 people and do their quests in parallel, but I kind of understand the reasoning behind limiting it to 1.

I liked the game, liked most of the options for quest resolution, and some intentionally OOC/sarcastic responses, though cannot recall the details now. The only advice I can give is to get a bag of holding early (there is a lot of loot and it is heavy) and save manually and often. Also at one point you can a small but satisfying action My second playthrough was focused on trying to kill a key NPC (the NPC and short summaries of my attempts follow)

For what it's worth, Frogwares managed to get the rights to their title back from Nacon, so I hope that Spiders will recover, unlikely may it be. Eurogamer.netFrogwares now sole publisher of The Sinking City followin...Ukrainian studio Frogwares is now the sole publisher of Lovecraft-inspired detective adventure The Sinking City.

Well, this is an excellent opportunity to test how long Steam can go offline. I did not expect the developers to actually mean it, but free stuff of the free-stuff-appropriate quality is welcome. I've finished the first 2 areas as of now. The game looks and runs worse than the original, has some odd QoL gaps (the over-the-shoulder camera and the interactive items highlight*), and the companion AI is not helpful, but everything else is fine (the controls are rebindable, the saving is actually good, the story and combat are there). The 30GB of the "highres" bloat can be removed only after downloading, like it was with Steelrising, but at least it is 1 file and can be binned without breaking things. It is disappointing to see what the publisher reduced the studio to. *the last time I had to continuously hold a key to move the camera was with NWN2. Regarding the highlights, it is hard to see anything without it on due to the excessive amount of visual noise and the upscaling (still present even if the Disabled option is chosen). Like, it's the basics of visual design - the player needs to see things, and they still failed it. But the volumetric fog and ray-tracing are in and the performance (on Steam Deck) is poor (<30FPS).

Veil of the Witch He's right. We need to increase our numbers to 9 and only then take on the undead army.

I've tried the demo of the stand-alone spinoff of The Lost Eidolons, the Veil of the Witch. The improvement in the visual design and UI are remarkable. The characters are distinct and recognisable, with a wide breadth of active and passive abilities and a good pace of upgrades, the UI and animations are expressive and quick, and the dialogues are concise and on point with the options to ask for more information. I love that the avatar is nameable and the appearance is slightly customisable. While I prefer more hand-crafted encounters and controlled upgrades, the overall experience feels like an enormous improvement over the first game. The demo offers about 2-3 hours of gameplay, the starting party, and 1 boss, so I hope to purchase it on the next sale (unless I forget). In the original game, I have reached Chapter 17 and the tier 3 classes.